In the second of three original podcasts for the Guardian, the dream-vision of Piers Plowman, is reflected against a contemporary backdrop of precarious labour and shifting working practices.

Piers the Plowman is an honest toiler who leads the dreamer on a pilgrimage to find Truth and recruits labourers to plough his half-acre of land. But when the workers revolt, Piers’s ideal community breaks down.

Written almost 650 years ago, Piers Plowman enters the mind of a wanderer, Will, as he falls asleep in the Malvern Hills and dreams of a “fair field full of folk”. This summer, a new site-specific theatrical production, Fair Field, reimagines this 7,000-line “poem of crisis” for the 21st century.